Obama: The Affirmative Action President!

What’s new?

Posted on American Thinker-By Matt Patterson-August 18, 2011:

“Years from now, historians may regard the 2008 election of Barack Obama as an inscrutable and disturbing phenomenon, a baffling breed of mass hysteria akin perhaps to the witch craze of the Middle Ages.  How, they will wonder, did a man so devoid of professional accomplishment beguile so many into thinking he could manage the world’s largest economy, direct the world’s most powerful military, execute the world’s most consequential job?

Imagine a future historian examining Obama’s pre-presidential life: ushered into and through the Ivy League despite unremarkable grades and test scores along the way; a cushy non-job as a “community organizer”; a brief career as a state legislator devoid of legislative achievement (and in fact nearly devoid of his attention, so often did he vote “present”); and finally an unaccomplished single term in United States Senate, the entirety of which was devoted to his presidential ambitions.  He left no academic legacy in academia, authored no signature legislation as legislator. 

And then there is the matter of his troubling associations: the white-hating, America-loathing preacher who for decades served as Obama’s “spiritual mentor”; a real-life, actual terrorist who served as Obama’s colleague and political sponsor.  It is easy to imagine a future historian looking at it all and asking: how on Earth was such a man elected president? 

Not content to wait for history, the incomparable Norman Podhoretz addressed the question recently in the Wall Street Journal:

“To be sure, no white candidate who had close associations with an outspoken hater of America like Jeremiah Wright and an unrepentant terrorist like Bill Ayers would have lasted a single day. But because Mr. Obama was black, and therefore entitled in the eyes of liberaldom to have hung out with protesters against various American injustices, even if they were a bit extreme, he was given a pass.”

Let that sink in: Obama was given a pass—held to a lower standard—because of the color of his skin.  Podhoretz continues:

“And in any case, what did such ancient history matter when he was also articulate and elegant and (as he himself had said) “non-threatening,” all of which gave him a fighting chance to become the first black president and thereby to lay the curse of racism to rest?”

Podhoretz puts his finger, I think, on the animating pulse of the Obama phenomenon—affirmative action.  Not in the legal sense, of course.  But certainly in the motivating sentiment behind all affirmative action laws and regulations, which are designed primarily to make white people, and especially white liberals, feel good about themselves. 

Unfortunately, minorities often suffer so that whites can pat themselves on the back.  Liberals routinely admit minorities to schools for which they are not qualified, yet take no responsibility for the inevitable poor performance and high drop-out rates which follow.  Liberals don’t care if these minority students fail; liberals aren’t around to witness the emotional devastation and deflated self esteem resulting from the racist policy that is affirmative action.  Yes, racist.  Holding someone to a separate standard merely because of the color of his skin—that’s affirmative action in a nutshell, and if that isn’t racism, then nothing is.  And that is what America did to Obama.

True, Obama himself was never troubled by his lack of achievements, but why would he be?  As many have noted, Obama was told he was good enough for Columbia despite undistinguished grades at Occidental; he was told he was good enough for the US Senate despite a mediocre record in Illinois; he was told he was good enough to be president despite no record at all in the Senate.  All his life, every step of the way, Obama was told he was good enough for the next step, in spite of ample evidence to the contrary.  What could this breed if not the sort of empty narcissism on display every time Obama speaks?

In 2008, many who agreed that he lacked executive qualifications nonetheless raved about Obama’s oratory skills, intellect, and cool character.  Those people—conservatives included—ought now to be deeply embarrassed.  The man thinks and speaks in the hoariest of clichés, and that’s when he has his teleprompter in front of him; when the prompter is absent he can barely think or speak at all.  Not one original idea has ever issued from his mouth—it’s all warmed-over Marxism of the kind that has failed over and over again for 100 years.

And what about his character?  Obama is constantly blaming anything and everything else for his troubles.  Bush did it; it was bad luck; I inherited this mess.  It is embarrassing to see a president so willing to advertise his own powerlessness, so comfortable with his own incompetence.  But really, what were we to expect?  The man has never been responsible for anything, so how do we expect him to act responsibly?

In short: our president is a small and small-minded man, with neither the temperament nor the intellect to handle his job.  When you understand that, and only when you understand that, will the current erosion of liberty and prosperity make sense.  It could not have gone otherwise with such a man in the Oval Office. 

But hey, at least we got to feel good about ourselves for a little while.  And really, isn’t that all that matters these days?

See also: The Era of Confronting Obama at Public Events

Update:

Author’s Note.  A lot of readers have written in asking me how I came to the conclusion that Obama was an unremarkable student and that he benefited from affirmative action.  Three reasons:

1) As reported by The New York Sun: “A spokesman for the university, Brian Connolly, confirmed that Mr. Obama spent two years at Columbia College and graduated in 1983 with a major in political science. He did not receive honors...”  In spite of not receiving honors as an undergrad, Obama was nevertheless admitted to Harvard Law. Why? 

2) Obama himself has written he was a poor student as a young man.  As the Baltimore Sun reported, in:  

“’Obama’s book ‘Dreams from My Father,’....the president recalled a time in his life...when he started to drift away from the path of success. ‘I had learned not to care,’ Obama wrote. ‘... Pot had helped, and booze; maybe a little blow when you could afford it.’ But his mother confronted him about his behavior. ‘Don’t you think you’re being a little casual about your future?” she asked him, according to the book. ‘... One of your friends was just arrested for drug possession. Your grades are slipping. You haven’t even started on your college applications.’” 

3) Most damning to me is the president’s unwillingness to make his transcripts public.  If Obama had really been a stellar student with impeccable grades as an undergrad, is there any doubt they would have been made public by now and trumpeted on the front page of the New York Times as proof of his brilliance?  To me it all adds up to affirmative action.” 

Source:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/obama_the_affirmative_action_president.html

Note: The following article and/or blog post relates to this issue-You Decide:

The Era of Confronting Obama at Public Events!

Posted on American Thinker-By J.R. Dunn-On August 18, 2011:

So here we have “former-Bush official Brad Blakeman” being quoted by the media as attacking Tea Party stalwart Ryan Rhodes over Rhodes’s confrontation with Obama.  It seems that every time we see the term “former Bush,” “former Reagan,” and for all I know “former Coolidge” official, it involves some venerable GOP figure calling airstrikes in on his or her own unit.  I guess it’s slow down at the shuffleboard court.

It’s possible to read all sorts of things into this, none of them good.  About the gentlest would be that Blakeman is missing the point.  Ryan is the farthest thing in the world from a political vagabond.  As the founder of the Iowa Tea Party, he is a crucial figure in one of the most important political movements of the past half-century.  He confronted Obama not because voices told him to or to get his picture in the paper, but to issue a rebuke, a necessary rebuke.  Obama had it coming for all sorts of reasons above and beyond the issue at hand.  (Joe Biden’s charming reference to the Tea Parties as “terrorists,” an incident that seems to have evaded Blakeman’s attention.)  In a just world, he’d be hearing the same thing at every whistle-stop, fundraiser, campaign speech, and vacation cookout from now until Krugman’s aggressive aliens arrive from Tau Ceti.  Ryan is to be applauded for doing something few would dare attempt, and bringing it off with considerable panache.

Blakeman is, of course, making the argument that we should “respect the office, and not the man.”  A perfectly legitimate stance, in normal times and dealing with normal politicians.  But since we are dealing with neither, it has been reduced to something recited by rote.  The times being what they are, extraordinary measures are called for.  If a man were to force his way into a schoolroom and begin flinging children out the window, we would be appalled—unless that man was aware that the school was ablaze and there was no other way out of the building.

Blakeman overlooks the simple truth that you can respect the office only as much as the incumbent does.  If the officeholder violates public trust, which can occur in any number of ways, from leaping on interns to appointing cronies to extralegal positions, the question of respect as such becomes moot.  Some behavior cannot and should not be tolerated.  If it were Caligula and Cesare Borgia in the Oval Office, I’m quite sure that Blakeman would not call for abject respect for either.  Obama, to be just, is comparable to neither of them in iniquity, but the principle holds.  You may call it an exaggeration for effect, the literary version of Ryan’s action.

The third point is that America’s liberals drew first blood and now have to take whatever comes.  It has been generations since a Democrat or liberal or leftist has behaved in the political arena according to any tradition of decency, honor, or gentility.  Barry Goldwater was an honest man and a politician of the highest standards.  If you were to look for his equal today, in either house on either side of the aisle, you would come up with no one.  And yet, when he ran for president in 1964, the entire liberal establishment cut loose with an unmatched campaign of slander.  Goldwater was a Nazi, an extremist, a paranoid schizophrenic, a maniac out to trigger a nuclear war.  And it wasn’t fringe publications making these accusations—it was the New York Times and the Big Three broadcast networks. The men involved in that campaign—including the great American Voice of Reason, Bill Moyers—went on to lengthy, lucrative, and influential careers.  Not a single one ever apologized; not a single one ever explained himself; not a single one was even confronted over his role.

The liberals have never backed off.  To this day, children in America’s schools are taught that the deranged Ronald Reagan tried to start WWIII and was halted only by the actions of the heroic Mikhail Gorbachev.  (You doubt this?  Ask your kids.)  George W. Bush was forced to fight an international war while the loyal opposition derided him as a Nazi, a subnormal, a mass murderer, and we could go for several pages.  One novel, an award-winning film, and at least two plays calling for his assassination were written, produced, and released.  Anyone suggesting the same as regards Barack Obama would wind up (at the very least) explaining himself in detail and at length to large men in dark suits, and possibly worse.  In our day the two political doctrines have been carefully divided and separated according to very simple criteria: with liberal Democrats every last comma of the rules of etiquette must be followed with punctilio.  With the GOP, anything goes. 

Which brings us to the last two years, in which the final shreds of civilized behavior were trampled in the left’s eagerness to get at the enemy.  A mother of a disabled child was attacked nationwide, in all major media outlets, for giving birth to and raising that child.  Forget about everything else Sarah Palin has endured—the attacks on her other children, the petty legal hassles, the rumors about her marriage, the fake photos, the betrayals from her own side, and so on. Concentrate on that one element.  When I was young, anyone who degraded a woman in such circumstances would have been fired, possibly physically beaten, blacklisted from his industry, and forced out of town, or even out of the country, in order to earn even the lowest type of living.  Today they get booked on The View.  That’s how far we’ve fallen—disabled kids, and their mothers, are fair game in the millennial United States.

And now we’re hearing much the same about Rick Perry and Michele Bachmann.  I’m not sure how this will work out.  Perry shoots his own coyotes when called upon, and Bachmann...well, she has that glint in her eye, the one that reads much the same as a sign saying, “DANGER - UNEXPLODED BOMB.”  You learn not to antagonize girls of a certain type as early as high school.  Can we assume that America’s liberals went to high school?

The point is that it was the liberals who tore up the rule book, flouted tradition, and violated every established tenet of behavior.  When you act this way, you open a door, and you have to accept whatever comes through that door.  The rules and traditions that might have protected you are no longer around to be appealed to.

Obama will be lucky if he is not faced with such a confrontation every week from now until the 2012 election.  He will receive much more and much worse in the way of invective and insult before then.  And he will have earned it.

Blakeman is not wrong in calling for a higher level of behavior.  But he is mistaken in speaking as if such a world actually exists, as if life in the millennial United States consists of men doffing their panamas every time they pass a woman, that each street corner is equipped with an Eagle Scout awaiting random old ladies, and that politicians shaking hands and calling each “old boy” really means something.  This is not the case, and to pretend otherwise, in an environment as debased and toxic as the one in which we live, is to accept humiliation and defeat.  Perhaps we may see a rebirth of politesse and manners at some point to come.  Nothing is impossible, and the social world often shifts between extremes.  But I can tell you this: it will never happen if this country’s liberals continue getting their way.”

Source:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2011/08/the_era_of_confronting_obama_at_public_events.html

Question:  Was President Obama ready for the presidency?

The following articles and/or blog posts and videos seem to answer this question-You Decide:

I. A Personality Profile of Barack Obama’s Leadership!

Posted on The National Ledger-By Chuck Norris-On October 22, 2008:

Obama will not lose his bid for the presidency because of his connections to Ayers, ACORN or socialist politics. In fact, he won’t lose it because of his stand on any issue. The coup de grace for Obama’s presidential election downfall will come only through convincing the American public of his lack of decisive leadership under pressure.

I’m not just talking about facing rogue nations or terrorist thugs. I’m referring to making major choices in conflict. Indecisiveness is his greatest weakness, and it’s one this country cannot afford at this time in its history.

Interestingly, a while back, the Unit for the Study of Personality in Politics, at St. John’s University and the College of St. Benedict, did a professional personality profile “for anticipating Obama’s likely leadership style as chief executive, thereby providing a basis for inferring the character and tenor of a prospective Obama presidency.” The study concluded:

“The combination of Ambitious, Accommodating, and Outgoing patterns in Obama’s profile suggests a (SET ITAL)confident conciliator (END ITAL) personality composite. Leaders with this personality prototype, though self-assured and ambitious, are characteristically gracious, considerate, and benevolent. They are energetic, charming, and agreeable, with a special knack for settling differences, favoring mediation and compromise over force or coercion as a strategy for resolving conflict. They are driven primarily by a need for achievement and also have strong affiliation needs, but a low need for power.”

While most might laud Obama’s personality as a needed polar opposite to George W. Bush’s, I pose to you that Obama’s “accommodating-conciliator-favoring-compromise” personality pendulum swing is way too far to the other side. Even Obama’s voting record proves that.

His own Democratic colleagues have a difficult time understanding why, when he was an Illinois state senator, he voted “present” (instead of “yes” or “no”) 129 times, including a number of noncommittal tallies on issues such as gun rights and abortion.

You also have heard that Obama doesn’t have any executive experience, whether it be running a government or a business. I would pose to you the reason is simply that he’s not comfortable making executive decisions. An“executive conciliator” overly depends upon others, at times compromising judgment and needed action in order to appease the masses. Proof of that was seen in how Obama handled his and our “emergency” economic decisions.

A few months ago, Obama did not turn to Warren Buffett for counsel on the housing crisis. As The Washington Post reported July 16, he turned to Franklin Raines, the former Fannie Mae chief executive officer and six-year money manipulator. The Post said Raines took “calls from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters.”

And consider Obama’s handling of the “emergency” bailout crisis. During the first go-round of the bailout, while McCain was certain of his stand, Obama wouldn’t say where he stood because he was afraid it would be a wrong or unpopular stand. Only after most of his political cronies were bribed in favor of the bailout did Obama give it his stamp of approval. If he cannot take decisive action as a senator in the greatest nation on earth, how in the world is he going to make critical and emergency decisions as the president?

Obama’s inability to draw and hold hard lines is the primary reason he repeatedly struggles with—and caves and morphs into—the polls or people in front of him. More than any other politician in history, he has flip-flopped on a host of critical issues: Iraq, Iran, gay rights, NAFTA, abortion, race, religion, gun control, etc. It’s one thing to be political, but it’s quite another to be a chronic people pleaser under pressure. Swaying based on political expediency is not a leadership quality we need in tough times. Sooner or later, that character flaw will bite Obama big-time—and us if we elect him president.

I’m not saying Obama has no continued future in politics. He just needs more experience in life to weed out those character deficiencies. That’s why I’m asking Americans to look afresh at these questions: Is Obama crisis-leadership qualified? Will he truly be ready Jan. 20 to assume the helm of our country?

Actually, those leadership questions have been answered already by three leading Democrats (before they could tastethe perks from their alignment with the Democratic presidential nominee). Obama’s own running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, replied only months ago about whether Obama is ready for the presidency: “Right now I don’t believe he is. The presidency is not something that lends itself to on-the-job training.” Then he later told George Stephanopoulos, “I stand by the statement.” Biden was right.

Before Obama was her party’s choice, Hillary Clinton repeatedly proved him to be an indecisive waffler who couldn’t or wouldn’t be pinned down on any issues. Hillary was right.

Even former President Bill Clinton dodged having to give an affirmative answer to an ABC correspondent when asked whether Obama is ready to be president by saying, “You can argue that no one is ready to be president.” Another smooth answer, Bill. The fact is he totally understands that Obama is not ready.

America is in one of its toughest hours—a market meltdown, the worst fiscal environment since the Great Depression—an economic 9/11, if you will. Do we really believe we can be delivered by an indecisive people pleaser as our country’s CEO?”

Source:

http://www.nationalledger.com/artman/publish/article_272623354.shtml

II. Video: Barack Obama Makes Shocking Confession!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5BnLozS-TnM&feature=related

III. Barack Obama, Forever Sizing Up!

Posted on The New York Times-By Jodi Kantor-On October 25, 2008:

These are excerpts from this article and/or blog post:

But in the Oval Office, Mr. Obama would have a new set of deficits. Just 47 years old and only four years into a national political career, he has never run anything larger than his campaign. He began his run for president while he was still getting lost in Washington, a city he does not yet know well. His promises are as vast as his résumé is short, and some of his pledges are competing ones: progressive rule and centrist red-blue fusion; wholesale transformation and down-to-earth pragmatism.”

“Barack Obama’s lowest moment as a community organizer in the 1980s came when he brought the executive director of the Chicago Housing Authority to Altgeld Gardens, a decrepit housing project, to hear complaints about asbestos. Seven hundred residents grew restless waiting for the tardy director. When he finally appeared, the meeting grew so raucous that the director fled after 15 minutes, to chants of “No more rent!”

“Mr. Obama’s message of change can be hard to pin down, and he has spent his entire career searching for the right way to fulfill his desire for broad social renewal.

First he became a community organizer, thinking change would flow from citizens upward; then he tried the law, which, as he learned from teaching legal history, was a highly imperfect instrument. Since then he has set his sights on changing government institutions, one higher than the next. Even in the Senate, he told a reporter, it was possible to have a career that was “not particularly useful.”

“Critics have used the Rezko incident to question Mr. Obama’s reputation as a reformer, to argue he has few core beliefs. They cite a proposal he made in the Senate for stringent reporting requirements concerning nuclear plant leaks, which he then softened after Republican colleagues and energy executives complained. The bill died in committee. Or the time he joined a bipartisan coalition on immigration reform but backed away when labor groups protested. That legislation collapsed, too…..”

…Most of all, his critics point to his “present” votes in the Illinois Legislature, in which he did not choose sides, avoiding difficult matters like trying juveniles as adults. At least 36 times (out of thousands of votes) Mr. Obama was the only senator to vote “present,” or one of just a few…

… He won the presidency of the Harvard Law Review in part because, weeks before voting, he made a speech in favor of affirmative action that so eloquently summarized the objections to it that the Review’s conservatives decided he felt their concerns deeply…”

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/26/weekinreview/26kantor.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

IV. Obama’s Prime-Time Appeal To Voters!-Posted on CBSNews.com-On October 29, 2008:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/10/29/politics/main4557333.shtml

V. Which Promises Will Obama Attempt First?-Posted on CBSNews.com-By Wyatt Andrews-On February 11, 2009:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/11/10/eveningnews/main4590947.shtml?tag=currentVideoInfo;videoMetaInfo

VI. Are We Home Alone?

Posted on The New York Times-By Thomas L. Friedman-On March 21, 2009:

“I ran into an Indian businessman friend last week and he said something to me that really struck a chord: “This is the first time I’ve ever visited the United States when I feel like you’re acting like an immature democracy.”

You know what he meant: We’re in a once-a-century financial crisis, and yet we’ve actually descended into politics worse than usual. There don’t seem to be any adults at the top — nobody acting larger than the moment, nobody being impelled by anything deeper than the last news cycle.

Instead, Congress is slapping together punitive tax laws overnight like some Banana Republic, our president is getting in trouble cracking jokes on Jay Leno comparing his bowling skills to a Special Olympian, and the opposition party is behaving as if its only priority is to deflate President Obama’s popularity.

I saw Eric Cantor, a Republican House leader, on CNBC the other day, and the entire interview consisted of him trying to exploit the A.I.G. situation for partisan gain without one constructive thought. I just kept staring at him and thinking:“Do you not have kids? Do you not have a pension that you’re worried about? Do you live in some gated community where all the banks will be O.K., even if our biggest banks go under? Do you think your party automatically wins if the country loses? What are you thinking?”

If you want to guarantee that America becomes a mediocre nation, then just keep vilifying every public figure struggling to find a way out of this crisis who stumbles once — like Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner or A.I.G.’s $1-a-year fill-in C.E.O., Ed Liddy — and you’ll ensure that no capable person enlists in government. You will ensure that every bank that has taken public money will try to get rid of it as fast it can, so as not to come under scrutiny, even though that would weaken their balance sheets and make them less able to lend money. And you will ensure that we’ll never get out of this banking crisis, because the solution depends on getting private money funds to team up with the government to buy up toxic assets — and fund managers are growing terrified of any collaboration with government.

President Obama missed a huge teaching opportunity with A.I.G. Those bonuses were an outrage. The public’s anger was justified. But rather than fanning those flames and letting Congress run riot, the president should have said: “I’ll handle this.”

He should have gone on national TV and had the fireside chat with the country that is long overdue. That’s a talk where he lays out exactly how deep the crisis we are in is, exactly how much sacrifice we’re all going to have to make to get out of it, and then calls on those A.I.G. brokers — and everyone else who, in our rush to heal our banking system, may have gotten bonuses they did not deserve — and tells them that their president is asking them to return their bonuses “for the sake of the country.”

Had Mr. Obama given A.I.G.’s American brokers a reputation to live up to, a great national mission to join, I’d bet anything we’d have gotten most of our money back voluntarily.

Inspiring conduct has so much more of an impact than coercing it. And it would have elevated the president to where he belongs — above the angry gaggle in Congress.

“There is nothing more powerful than inspirational leadership that unleashes principled behavior for a great cause,” said Dov Seidman, the C.E.O. of LRN, which helps companies build ethical cultures, and the author of the book “How.”

What makes a company or a government “sustainable,” he added, is not when it adds more coercive rules and regulations to control behaviors. “It is when its employees or citizens are propelled by values and principles to do the right things, no matter how difficult the situation,” said Seidman. “Laws tell you what you can do. Values inspire in you what you should do. It’s a leader’s job to inspire in us those values.”

Right now we have an absence of inspirational leadership. From business we hear about institutions too big to fail — no matter how reckless. From bankers we hear about contracts too sacred to break — no matter how inappropriate.

And from our immature elected officials we hear about how it was all “the other guy’s fault.” I’ve never talked to more people in one week who told me, “You know, I listen to the news, and I get really depressed.”

Well, help may finally be on the way: one reason we’ve been sidetracked talking about bonuses is because the big issue — the real issue — the president’s comprehensive plan to remove the toxic assets from our ailing banks, which is the key to our economic recovery, has taken a long time to hammer out.

So all kinds of lesser issues and clowns have ballooned in importance and only confused people in the vacuum.

Hopefully, that plan will be out by Monday, and hopefully the president will pull the country together behind it, and hopefully the lawmakers who have to approve it will remember that this is not a time for politics as usual — and thatour country, alas, is not too big to fail. Hopefully …”

Source:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/22/opinion/22friedman.html?emc=tnt&tntemail1=y

VII. Obama the Polarizer!

Posted on RealClearPolitics-By Jay Cost-On May 11, 2010:

In January, 2007 Barack Obama declared his candidacy for the presidency with these words:

“It’s not the magnitude of our problems that concerns me the most. It’s the smallness of our politics. America’s faced big problems before. But today, our leaders in Washington seem incapable of working together in a practical, common sense way. Politics has become so bitter and partisan, so gummed up by money and influence, that we can’t tackle the big problems that demand solutions. And that’s what we have to change first. We have to change our politics, and come together around our common interests and concerns as Americans.”

Today, Gallup reports:

“(Obama’s) first-year ratings were the most polarized for a president in Gallup history, with an average 65-point gap between Republicans and Democrats. Obama’s approval ratings have become slightly more polarized thus far in his second year in office, with an average 69-point gap between Democrats (83%) and Republicans (14%) since late January.”

This is a big deal. The first quote is the principal reason Barack Obama ran for President. At a minimum, it was his first public argument for why he thought the country should elect him, as opposed to the dozen or so other candidates who would enter the race. It remained a critically important idea throughout his candidacy. Remember, the Obama campaign was an “audacious” act of line-jumping within the Democratic Party. His justification was that the country couldn’t afford to keep playing the same old political games. The hook of his candidacy was: America, do you reallywant to do Bush-Clinton-Bush-Clinton?

Yet here we are, breaking records for polarization. How did that happen? Why has Obama failed to do what he promised?

I think there are two big reasons.

First, Obama’s implicit claim throughout his candidacy was that public divisiveness was somehow a failure of leadership. This was mostly nonsense. This country has been divided over cultural issues since at least 1973 andRoe v. Wade. It has been divided on fiscal issues since Reagan cut taxes in 1981; this ended the hidden tax of bracket creep, but meant that legislators had to make hard choices between more spending and lower taxes. It has been divided on foreign policy issues since the Bush Administration’s response to 9/11.

These are all real things. They are not rhetorical wrinkles that a Jon Favreau speech can iron out. Obama’s choices have mostly been liberal (with the notable exceptions of dealing with Iraq and Afghanistan). His speechwriters have endeavored to present his choices as win-wins, but their words have failed to persuade because the President’s choices are rarely in fact win-wins. They usually favor one worldview or set of interests over others. Favor one side enough times and the losers will start to see what’s going on, “eloquent” speeches aside.

Second, insofar as leadership could bridge the many divides in this country, this President has never been in a good position to exercise it. He owes too much to others. You don’t win a nomination battle like the Clinton-Obama smackdown without making a bunch of promises. Remember that neither Clinton nor Obama secured enough delegates through the primaries and caucuses; Obama needed the superdelegates, chief among them being Speaker Nancy Pelosi (easily the most powerful Democrat in the country prior to the President’s inauguration). There is a long line of constituent groups in the Democratic Party who certainly needed assurances about what an Obama presidency would look like. So long as reelection remains to be secured, these groups at least have to be monitored if not placated. And so, in a time of great divisiveness, the people with the closest connection to the 44th President are consistently on one side of the aisle. The left side.

This feature of the Obama presidency came through most clearly on health care. Obama talked a good game about bipartisan compromise, but at no point did I get the impression that he was willing to ditch a guy like George Miller (a far left liberal in the House) to pick up a moderate Republican like Delaware’s Mike Castle. Indeed, George Miller was one of the key authors of the health care bill in the House! There’s no practical way you can get George Miller and Mike Castle to work together on a comprehensive overhaul of the American health care system. They are just too far apart ideologically. So, the question is: whose vote do you value more? Obama’s answer has been crystal clear in his deeds, if not his words. 



Of course, presidents have to tend to their party coalitions. That’s the way its been since the 1790s; John Adams did a lousy job of dealing with the arch-Federalists, and Alexander Hamilton eventually stabbed him in the back. Ever since then, the role of the President as manager of his party has been pretty straightforward. It’s hard to begrudge Obama for trying to manage his party. What’s more, politicians hate to assign losers, so they try to convince us that everybody’s a winner. It’s predictable that Obama would try his hand at this as well. Sure, he promised during the campaign that he’d talk clearly about the hard choices - but anybody who believed that, at least after he ditched public financing of his campaign for nakedly political purposes, was simply looking for a reason to vote for him.

But why won’t he simply own his polarizing presidency? He made the choices he has made, and the consequences have been predictable, so he should own them. But no. As far as he’s concerned, he is the bipartisan bridge builder he promised to be. It’s those damned lying liars on the other side who have distorted his record!

As Matt Welch noted over at Reason, he’s “working the refs.”

“[Obama’s] message...is clear, clever, and wrong. The boom in opinionated, interconnected media is a challenge to our very democracy (it isn’t). News needs to be hermetically sealed from opinion (it doesn’t). The primary purpose of media consumption should be empowerment (if there was a primary purpose for media consumption, I sure as hell wouldn’t trust a president to identify it). And the most dangerous purveyor of untruths is the 24/7 echo chamber...

While hypocritical (given the president’s own slippery relationship with the truth) this critique is strategically clever. For those still inclined to believe it, the message reinforces Obama’s fading image as a truth-telling, above-it-all academic (see the Michigan speech in particular for a bunch of we need to get beyond the tired debate about big-vs.-small-government claptrap). And for the straight-journalism types this is a soothing tongue-bath from the Sensible Centrist in Chief that reinforces their own self-pity/importance and gives them even more motivation to go after the real lying liars: The ones who noisily and hyperbolically oppose the policies of the most powerful man on earth.”

I think this is dead on, and it fits into the point I’m making here. The President could acknowledge that his policies are truly divisive. He could claim that while he respects the objections of the opposition, he believes that in the long run his way of thinking will be vindicated. That would be the grown-up thing to do. That would be real leadership. Instead, he implies that if only we got rid of the right wing talk machine, the public would see that every last one of his policies has been a win-win.

Enough is enough, Mr. President. You’re a polarizing leader in a polarized age. Own it.”

Source:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2010/05/obama_the_polarizer.html

Note:  What follows is a must see five video series that contain an eye-opening interview conducted by Peter Robinson with Andrew Breitbart, a publisher, columnist, and blogger, who is the founder of Breitbart.comBreitbart.tv,Big GovernmentBig HollywoodBig Journalism, and Big Peace. He is also the author of his latest book titled “Righteous Indignation”.

Also included is a book review of Andrew Breitbart’s new book that reveals the history of Socialism in America, beginning with early worship of Jean-Jacques Rousseau (who actually came before Karl Marx) to the scary Frankfurt School at Columbia University and that Marxism started in universities, government and the media, which he claims is America’s worst enemy, along with “13 Rules for Conservative Activists” and much more:

Left & Right with Andrew Breitbart: ‘Andrew Breitbart describes his liberal origins’ (Chapter 1 of 5)-Posted on National Review Online-On June 13, 2011:

http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/post/?q=MDBjZjcxOWI2ZDQ1MzVhMjc0Y2FhYWFlODNmNDhlYWI=

Left & Right with Andrew Breitbart: ‘Andrew Breitbart illustrates the Democrat-Media Complex.’ (Chapter 2 of 5)-Posted on National Review Online-On June 14, 2011:

http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/post/?q=YWQ5NGY1MzY4NzA4MjJmNTkwNmZmNDk3N2Y4N2I3YjE=

Left & Right with Andrew Breitbart: ‘Andrew Breitbart accepts some blame for the Huffington Post.’ (Chapter 3 of 5)-Posted on National Review Online-On June 15, 2011:

http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/post/?q=MjZmN2U0ZGIzMjc2NGU1MmQwYjQ0YTJlZTdkNDA4YzM=

Left & Right with Andrew Breitbart: ‘Andrew Breitbart reveals his one “Ah ha!” moment.’ (Chapter 4 of 5)-Posted on National Review Online-On June 16, 2011:

http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/post/?q=NjlhZGJiYzVhM2U1OWRmYjM5NjJkMTUyNTE1ZDBlY2Y=

Left & Right with Andrew Breitbart: ‘Andrew Breitbart lists his rules.’ (Chapter 5 of 5)-Posted on National Review Online-On June 17, 2011:

http://tv.nationalreview.com/uncommonknowledge/post/?q=ODE4OGZmNWMzYzk3NWJjZmMyNjU0M2U3OTk2YzYyYzc=

Book Review: Andrew Breitbart’s Righteous Indignation!-Posted on The Patriot Update-By Ann-Marie Murrell-On May 23, 2011:

http://patriotupdate.com/articles/book-review-andrew-breitbart’s-righteous-indignation

Note: The following articles and/or blog posts provide us with some excellent resources that we should arm ourselves with for the battle that is ahead of us, along with some thought provoking pointers of what we need to do to keep the left and their handmaidens in the corrupt and criminally negligent media from choosing our next President, who must be a smart, fierce, brave, courageous and America loving patriot that will lead us in tackling those issues that are extremely critical to our nation at this historic juncture, which are:  foreign policy, Iran, Israel, national security and the economy-You Decide:

A survey of the plans to 'halt the bleeding' before it's too late!-Posted on WND.com-On November 9, 2011:

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=365865

We Must Not Choose Obama Lite: Courageous Foreign Policy Leadership Must Define GOP Nominee!-Posted on Big Government-By Pamela Geller-On November 8, 2011:

http://biggovernment.com/pgeller/2011/11/08/we-must-not-choose-obama-lite-courageous-foreign-policy-leadership-must-define-gop-nominee/#more-370076

Note:  My following blog posts contain numerous articles and/or blog posts and videos that relate to this disturbing issue-You Decide:

Extensive Research Into Senator Obama’s Background Completed on November 3, 2008:

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2009/04/26/extensive-research-into-senator-obama’s-background-completed-on-november-10-2008/

The Greatest Fraud Perpetrated in American History!

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2011/06/20/the-greatest-fraud-perpetrated-in-american-history/

Obama the Polarizer!

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/obama-the-polarizer/

Are we witnessing an absence of inspirational leadership or lack of leadership skills?

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/05/10/are-we-witnessing-an-absence-of-inspirational-leadership-or-lack-of-leadership-skills/

President and DOJ have contributed to the racial mess in our country!

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/09/26/president-and-doj-have-contributed-to-the-racial-mess-in-our-country/

Is Being An Empathetic Liberal Minority The New Prerequisite for Being a Supreme Court Justice?

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2009/05/26/is-being-an-empathetic-liberal-minority-the-new-prerequisite-for-being-a-supreme-court-justice/

Who owns our supposedly fair and balanced airwaves and news outlets?

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/10/21/who-owns-our-supposedly-fair-and-balanced-airwaves-and-news-outlets/

Supreme Court to Strike Down Obamacare!

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2010/03/27/supreme-court-to-strike-down-obamacare/

Is it important to understand the Marxist assault on the foundations of our system?

http://weroinnm.wordpress.com/2011/01/27/is-it-important-to-understand-the-marxist-assault-on-the-foundations-of-our-system/

Note If you have a problem viewing any of the listed blog posts please copy web site and paste it on your browser. Be aware that some of the articles and/or blog posts or videos listed within the contents of the above blog post(s) may have been removed by this administration because they may have considered them to be too controversial.  Sure seems like any subject matter that may shed some negative light on this administration is being censored-What happened to free speech?-You Decide.

“Food For Thought”

God Bless the U.S.A.!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q65KZIqay4E&feature=related

Semper Fi!

Jake

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